The invention relates to an electrical connector comprising a housing of electrically insulating material, provided with at least one contact element of electrically conducting material having a contact end, extending from a base part and designed as a plug contact, for making contact to a further contact element, in which the contact end is made up of two oppositely spaced elongated plate parts extending from the base part, with one end fixedly joined thereto.
An electrical power connector provided with contact elements having a contact end designed as a plug contact of the type mentioned above is known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,881,905.
Plug contact elements are usually made by pressing, flattening or another suitable mechanical processing from stiff, solid electrically conducting material. Embodiments of plug contacts are also known which are made up of two or more solid parts, each having, for example, a circular-sector-shaped cross section. These known plug contacts have the common characteristic that they form a stiff entity.
It has been found that such stiff plug contacts have a number of disadvantages which, in particular, weigh heavily in producing connectors having reduced dimensions for which there is a still growing requirement in view of the current trend for scale reduction (miniaturization) of electronic components.
In contrast to a plug contact element made up of stiff solid material, plug contacts formed from plate material, have certain flexible properties. The two plate parts can be moved in the direction towards and away from one another and can also be displaced with respect to one another. This results in a self-aligning action on making contact to a further contact element having a contact end designed, for example, as socket contact when the two contact ends are not exactly in line with one another. In particular, in the case of connectors having relatively large numbers of plug contacts, for example 80 or more, this self-aligning action has a beneficial effect on achieving as low as possible an insertion force for the making of connector contact. Moreover, this self-aligning action promotes the contact reliability between the contact elements which are to make contact.
In the plug contact element known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,881,905 the two oppositely spaced elongated plate parts are joined to the base part in a cantilevered manner. That is to say, the free ends of the plate parts are not in physical contact with one another. When contacting a further contact element, i.e. a socket contact element, the plate parts are deflected towards each other which produces a certain mechanical stress in the contact element. In order to reduce the amount of deflection and stress without affecting the thickness, length and material constant of the contact element, the width of the plate parts has to be enlarged. This however contraverses the current trend for scale reduction in the electronics field, i.e. designing small pitch miniature connectors.
DE-A-1,540,643 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,371,152 disclose contact elements having connecting ends for wire wrap applications, comprising adjacently spaced elongated plate parts. However these plate parts are connected via an intermediate strip in longitudinal direction. For miniaturisation purposes these connecting ends have an insufficient self-aligning action on mating with a receiving contact element, due to said intermediate connecting strip.